Scarred by school violence

A teenage jock, gunned down at a Lake Worth school, forgave the shooter but found no justice in the legal system.

An assistant principal, shot at by a student, never returned to the Fort Lauderdale school again.

The father of a Miami-Dade student killed by a classmate used his death as motivation to become a better man.

In years past, all three were touched by terror in a place that was supposed to be safe: a South Florida public school. Though the headlines fade and the shock dissipates, they say such violence leaves an indelible mark. Nobody walks away the same person.

Now, another family must tread that emotional land mine. Anthony Thompson and Joyce Collette this month buried their daughter, Amanda Collette, 15, who was shot in the hallway of Fort Lauderdale's Dillard High. Her classmate and friend has been charged with the murder.

At the funeral to offer their support were Jorge and Maria Gough. The couple's 14-year-old son was murdered in 2004 by a Southwood Middle School classmate in Miami-Dade County.

"We wanted to let them know we know what they're going through," Jorge Gough says. "We know how much it hurts."

Traumatic experiences

In the immediate aftermath, they swim in a toxic stew of shock, anger and grief.

The Goughs' son, Jaime, died after a boy he considered his best friend lured him into a school bathroom stall. There, Michael Hernandez, 14, slashed Jaime's neck and stabbed him more than 40 times in the neck, face and hands.

Maria Gough remembers hating the family and the boy who killed her only son. Jorge Gough recalls how grief tore the couple apart and he considered divorce.

"But I knew I needed to be with my family," he says. "I knew I'd be lost and my wife would be lost."

On the last day of the 1994-95 school year, Dieuly Aristilde arrived at Lake Worth High to pick up his girlfriend. He encountered Alex Kucer, 19, whom he'd known since middle school.

Kucer told police he feared Aristilde. But at the time, witnesses said that when Aristilde tried to get away, Kucer shot him. The bullet ripped through Aristilde's intestines, critically wounding him.

"I wanted to see him punished," Aristilde says.

He wanted a trial and stronger charges for Kucer, who got a plea bargain, Aristilde says. He wanted him charged with attempted murder, not aggravated battery.

He was an 18-year-old Santaluces High graduate heading to college when he was shot by the white high school dropout. Aristilde, who is black, thought race figured into the lesser charge.

"It just took something out of me, and I didn't go on to college," Aristilde says. "It changed everything in my life. You can imagine how the anger built in my heart. I felt like a black man worth nothing."

Two years before that shooting, in 1993, Marvin Jones, 17, shot at Dillard High Assistant Principal Debra Bowers after she suspended him.

Pulling a gun from his pants, he said: "I'll give you something to suspend me for." Bowers turned away, and the bullet missed.

She was so stunned, she didn't even tell her mother the next day at Thanksgiving, her husband Eddie Gaskin says.

Jones was sentenced to three years in prison, but that didn't deaden the impact for Bowers. She had trouble sleeping. She eventually saw a counselor. The shooting was so traumatic she took an administrative job rather than work around students again, Gaskin says. "She thought she was going to die," he adds.

Serious school crime down

Though headlines make it appear that schools are a war zone, U.S. Department of Education reports show that school is one of the safest places for children.

The percentage of students ages 12 to 18 affected by serious crime at school - homicide, rape, robbery - has dropped from 1.3 percent in 1994 to 0.5 percent in 2005, says Philip Cook, a visiting professor of public policy at the University of Maryland who worked on the 2003 federal government report "Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence."

The reasons why aren't clear, he says. The debate includes everything from the waning crack epidemic to incarceration rates.

"What we can say is that crime in school is a reflection of crime in society," he says.

Since South Florida's population has mushroomed and weapons are more available, headlines repeat a weapons-at-school story with numbing familiarity. This month alone, police charged Teah Wimberly, 15, with killing Amanda Collette. An 8-year-old brought a gun to Fort Lauderdale's Walker Elementary. A 16-year-old sneaked a gun and ammunition into Miramar High. And a 16-year-old was caught carrying two knives on the campus of Hallandale Adult Community Center, a middle and high school for students who have struggled elsewhere.

In the past four years, police and school officials confiscated almost 3,000 weapons - guns, knives, brass knuckles and chemical weapons, including tear gas guns - in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Still, state figures show that the number of students bringing weapons to school has decreased in Palm Beach County in the past four years and was declining in Broward until a spike in the 2007-08 school year. The school district attributes that spike to increased reporting of incidents.

Making campuses weapons- and violence-free is virtually impossible. School officials consider metal detectors to be impractical and ineffective. They rely on intervention programs such as Broward's Silence Hurts, where students alert teachers or security officers about weapons.

Given the amount of time students are at school and the number of people on campus, "my reality is that if it's going to happen, there's a potential of it happening at a school," Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Art Johnson says.

Time doesn't erase the image of a flashing gun and the terrifying thought of death at another's hands. That the violence takes place in a school, traditionally a safe haven, only adds to the impact.

Still, time can make the emotional wounds more bearable.

Today, Aristilde, 32, is an imposing figure in a boxing ring at a West Palm Beach gym, where he's training for his next fight. After moving from job to job, the single father of three is now a professional boxer.

"If a bullet can't kill me, no man can," he says. "In that way it made me stronger. I'm over all of it. You have to move on."

Assistant Principal Bowers married Gaskin four months after the shooting and died after giving birth to a daughter at 36. She didn't live long enough after the shooting - just 13 months - to put it behind her.

"She could never get it out of her mind," says her husband, who lives in Ocala with their daughter. "She loved kids and she loved her job. But she never went back to the classroom. She never returned to the school, not even to pick up her things."

The Goughs recently saw their son's killer sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. The Miami-Dade School Board also agreed to pay the family $1.7 million in a settlement after the couple notified the district about a possible lawsuit citing "negligent supervision and security."

Despite their grief, they've tried to find the peace that comes with forgiveness, they say.

"You can't let anger consume you," says Jorge Gough, a house painter. "You'll dig yourself into a hole and you can't get out."

Rather than getting a divorce, Jorge Gough worked on becoming a better husband and father. He stopped smoking and gave away the alcohol in his liquor cabinet. He calls his wife to tell her he loves her. He makes a point to listen to Jaime's sister, Brenda, 15. He spends more time in church.

"I wanted to be better and do better," he says. "I realized, you don't know if you're going to live to see tomorrow."